


stardust for the aching souls

by loosingletters



Series: Lost Tales of Gotham [10]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Metahumans, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24626986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loosingletters/pseuds/loosingletters
Summary: There wasn’t much to be said about Arlo Temmings, exhausted high school student and part-time vigilante, except that the Red Hood nearly bleeds out in his kitchen.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Original Male Character(s)
Series: Lost Tales of Gotham [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1416067
Comments: 5
Kudos: 95





	stardust for the aching souls

**Author's Note:**

> I got this prompt on tumblr: Idk if you write ocs, but if you do, can you write something about a male teen vigilante that was Jason's best friend? Something angsty but with a happy ending maybe, like Jason feels all alone after he came back and oc yells at him and makes him see he really cares about him?
> 
> And now I have a new OC whom I love.

There was not a lot to be said about Arlo Temmings, exhausted high school student, but plenty about the upstart vigilante Stardust. Stardust was not affiliated with the batclan, not really, but Arlo supposed that had more to do with the fact that he really wasn’t the heroic, batarangs blazing, taking down mob bosses kind of vigilante. Arlo’s powers allowed him to heal others, given that he was physically well enough and had eaten enough. He’d always thought all those videos about metahumans and their heightened metabolism were jokes, but ever since he’d woken up with the ability to literally kiss away bruises, he’d been eating nonstop. Protein shakes were his new favorite breakfast, lunch and dinner because you could only eat so many pizzas before you started throwing them up on sight.

Arlo hadn’t even wanted to become a vigilante or do anything that had to do with healing. Honestly, he was planning to graduate high school with a just average enough GPA and then get some average job somewhere. He used to have bigger ambitions when he was twelve and had the coolest best friend possible.

Well, Jason Todd had been the tutor he’d gotten through their schools’ exchange programs, but he’d acted more like a friend. A very nerdy friend who was the living proof that some people got extremely lucky in life while others didn’t, but his friend nonetheless. Jason had planned to get a college degree at a fancy school, out of Gotham and told Arlo he should dream bigger as well, like graduating with honors big. Studying architecture.

Jason would be pretty disappointed to see how terrible Arlo’s grades had gotten, but Jason was dead and dead people couldn’t do shit.

So Arlo knew pretty much nothing about how human bodies worked except that the mitochondria were the powerhouse of the cell. Arlo had been flunking his biology exams ever since he had first been forced to learn about the fact that plants didn’t, in fact, just grow when Poison Ivy decided that now would be an awesome time to wreck an entire city block.

She’d also been the reason he got pushed into this whole hero business. Turned out that Arlo’s abilities were immensely useful when it came to disaster relief and so Stardust had been born. Crime Alley’s very own non-violent superhero, running around in a black hoodie, a Venetian mask covered with stars, and dark, paint-splattered jeans. Nobody had tried to hurt him yet when he walked out. Pushing the bats around who were all too willing to put you away for life was one thing, hurting the kid whose voice cracked when he was nervous, but could heal your broken bones while glowing like a supernova was something different. Arlo enjoyed his immunity, really. He only wanted to help others, make the world a slightly better place. He’d grown up staring at the pretty buildings at the other end of the city, wanting to live in one of them and built his dream around that. This situation wasn’t so different.

Tonight had been one of the bad nights though. Arlo had already gone through most of his snacks as people of all ages came to find him. Usually, he just walked through the streets, people spotted him and pulled him in new directions. It was reckless and stupid, but everybody knew Arlo was kind of untouchable because he cared for everyone and so everyone cared for Arlo.

And it wasn’t like anybody would be waiting for him at home. His father had died years ago and his mother was never there. The streets were kinder, more vibrant and alive, than Arlo’s actual home.

“Thank you,” the girl whose knee he’d fixed whispered.

“No problem,” Arlo repeated and yawned. He was tired and he had an early class tomorrow, or today if he wanted to be honest with himself. He should head back and try to catch at least three hours of sleep.

Arlo grabbed his bike and began heading home. As an unaffiliated vigilante, he didn’t have any fancy bat tech. Red Robin had offered to get him something, but Arlo wouldn’t know where to stick that anyway. Besides, the mob might start roughing him up if they knew he was on Batman’s payroll. So instead, Arlo had an actual normal bicycle. It had been a gift from Red Hood, who’d been a little appalled that Arlo just got everywhere by foot.

“That’s dangerous,” he’d said like he wasn’t waving around a gun at the same time.

Red Hood was a strange vigilante. He was no hero, he hurt and killed people, wrecked and ruined them and left behind a terrifying warzone. But he didn’t hurt kids.

That was one thing every child in Crime Alley knew. As long as you were young still, you didn’t have to fear the Red Hood. Adults were fair game, they were supposed to be better, but kids were just kids. Arlo himself had only just turned fifteen. He’d spent his birthday watching cartoons and doing an extra-long nightshift and then accepted a sleek black bicycle as his birthday present. He was reasonably sure the entire batclan knew who his civilian identity was, Red Hood did for sure or he wouldn’t have been able to deliver the bike to his house door. Arlo stopped his bike and parked it in the small garage all the families on the top floor had to share and made his way upstairs. He stretched and tiredly pulled his keys out of his pocket to open his door when he noticed that it wasn’t closed.

So his mom was back, likely drunk as well. Great.

Arlo pushed open the door and closed it behind himself. Without much care, he walked down the hallway, not bothering to turn on the lights. His mom would just complain about a headache or something. He entered the kitchen and opened up the fridge. Happily, he noticed that his takeout was still there. He took it out of the fridge and fished a fork out of the water basin and began munching on his noodles. He was so freaking hungry. Closing his eyes, he enjoyed his meal.

“Aahrlo?”

Arlo would later claim that he didn’t, in fact, scream, but that was exactly what he did when he heard somebody who was very much not his mother whisper his name. The food dropped on the floor and Arlo twisted around. Behind the table, in the very right corner of the kitchen, sat a dark figure. The must be tall and their hair was an inky black color.

“Red Hood?” Arlo asked and immediately rushed over to the other vigilante. “You- uh. Um, what are you doing here?”

He was pale and Arlo didn’t think it was just because of the moonlight illuminating his skin.

“Head wound,” Red Hood replied. “Didn’ know where else t’ go.”

Arlo kneeled down next to Red Hood and could only now spot the dark red that was quelling out between his hair. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, he was _not_ going to bleed out in Arlo’s kitchen.

“Can you ‘elp?”

He was slurring his words, Arlo was pretty sure that was a bad sign. Due to the bad light, he couldn’t actually make out a lot of his features, and his mask still covered his eyes, but even so, Red Hood sounded so familiar and young. Arlo’s age kind of young. He’d never seen the other vigilante without his red helmet, but he’d assumed he was older. He was so brutal, so skilled.

Nothing like Stardust who barely knew how to throw a punch and was relying on other people’s goodwill.

“Hold still,” Arlo ordered and put his hands on Red Hood’s wound. The vigilante hissed, but Arlo didn’t even twitch anymore. He’d gotten so used to the feeling of blood sticking to his hands, it was almost welcome. He associated it with the rush he got when his powers activated.

“You glow,” Red Hood muttered, entirely out of it. He had lost a lot of blood, but head wounds generally bled a lot, didn’t they? “Like a fairy.”

Arlo giggled nervously and pushed his long dreads behind his back. “A girl I helped tonight told me I look like Rapunzel.”

“Nah,” Red Hood replied. “You’re not stuck in a tower all by yourself. You’re not-“ His breath hitched. “-not lonely at all.”

The wound was slowly closing, not as fast as it usually would, but Arlo was also dead tired.

“I don’t know,” Arlo confessed. “I feel pretty lonely all the time.”

Red Hood laughed, it was a dark and bitter sound, tethering on the edge of a sob or so it seemed to Arlo.

“But you’re good, always were. Helping people and all that. You’re not like me, you don’t fuck up. You stop listening and don’t give in to all that anger. You’re _good_ and you don’t push people away and hurt them all over again.”

Arlo took his hands off Red Hood’s head and rested them on his thighs, blood smearing all over his jeans.

“You’re good too,” Arlo said. “You help people-“

“No,” Red Hood interrupted him harshly. “I just- I just get rid of problems. I shot a man point-blank. His brains just- it was everywhere and the kids were screaming and I just made everything worse but I was so fucking angry and didn’t even care-“

Arlo wasn’t good with words. He didn’t like reading, his dyslexia made it a god damn nightmare, and he couldn’t use all those fancy words he used to practice during tutoring because they felt so foreign on his tongue. Gestures, though, he knew. His parents used to be affectionate. His father was always holding him, had been holding him the day he died, protecting Arlo against debris. Slowly, to avoid startling him, Arlo put his arms around Red Hood. The other man tensed beneath Arlo’s touch, then slowly relaxed in his hold and even went as far as resting his head on Arlo’s shoulder, probably smearing blood all over it.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Arlo said, at loss for words.

“You shouldn’t be,” Red Hood replied. “You really, really shouldn’t.

“Well, I am,” Arlo insisted. “In fact, I’m so glad I’m going to cook you something because I need to eat and you need to eat and then I can heal any other injuries you have as well.”

Arlo kept on blabbering about whatever came to his mind until Red Hood was seated at his kitchen table and Arlo could hardly keep his eyes open anymore.

So, really, there wasn’t much to be said about Arlo Temmings, exhausted high school student and part time vigilante. His grades were held together by duct tape and safety pins and sometimes Red Hood nearly bled out in his kitchen while Arlo made an utter fool of himself and fell asleep on him.

**Author's Note:**

> Me, writing: I'll pepper in the fact that Jason shouldn't be killing  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
